Welcome to Barbara Burgess' Web site

Barbara Burgess, Ph. D. is a writer, photographer and educator from Topeka, Kansas.

Barbara is recently retired as assistant professor of journalism at
Washburn University in Topeka and Director of the Center for Kansas
Studies. She is a scholar of the Oregon Trail. She has a BA in English
from Colorado College (Colorado Springs), a MS in journalism from
Kansas State University, and a doctorate in American Studies from the
University of Kansas. Both her masters degree thesis and her doctoral
dissertation are studies of the journals written by women on the
overland trail. (Dissertation: Migrant Women to Oregon, 1836 -
1860)

She became an Oregon Trail watcher about 20 years ago after she
discovered the trail ruts of a branch of the Oregon Trail in the
family’s pasture northwest of Wamego. Her trail activities have
included tracing and mapping the trail across Pottawatomie County,
preserving historic sites and trail ruts, organizing car caravans to
follow the trail, lobbying the Kansas legislature in support of
legislation to mark the trail across Kansas and to commemorate the
150th anniversary of the Oregon migration, writing newspaper and
magazine articles about the trail, presenting speeches about the trail
and overland migration, exploring the 189 miles of the trail in Kansas,
and studying the journals written by travelers on the trail.

Barbara, her husband Denny, and their sons have traced the trail
from Independence to Oregon City.